All Posts By

James Schaap

Blog

Local Sodbuster Makes Good

When James Fenimore Cooper complained about the novel he was reading, his wife told him to put up or shut up, to just go ahead

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Blog

“An Outburst of Prayer”

[It was not my intent to use this poem today, but Matthew’s comments yesterday offered an opening. Jelle Pelmulder, Sioux County’s (IA) first school master, wrote

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Couteau de prairies

  I wasn’t born and reared here. My home–I’m not sure how anyone finally defines that word–is really the western shore of Lake Michigan, where sunrise

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Massacre of the Innocents

Coventry, England, a city of 250,00 in the West Midlands, boasted significant industrial power when the Europe went to war in 1940, industries Hitler wouldn’t

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Men Behaving Goodly

If I heard it once, I heard the story a dozen times. It was all about the gendered shape of conversation. Went like this. One

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Slim Buttes

That the hide painting is mislabeled is no one’s fault, really. Somewhere along the line of ownership it was likely a slip of the tongue

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“Over There”

Johnnie, get your gun Get your gun, get your gun Take it on the run On the run, on the run Hear them calling, you

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Blog

Lament for Halloween

You’ve got to be my age or older, and you have to have been born in a small town to know what I’m talking about,

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